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William Habington
William Habington (November 4, 1605 - November 30, 1654) was an English poet. Life Overview Habington, son of a Worcestershire Roman Catholic gentleman, was educated at St. Omer's, but refused to become a Jesuit. He married Lucia, daughter of Lord Powis, whom he celebrated in his poem Castara (1634), in which he sang the praises of chaste love. He also wrote a tragi-comedy, The Queen of Arragon (1640), and a Historie of Edward IV. His verse is graceful and tender.John William Cousin, "Habington, William," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910, 172. Web, Jan. 22, 2018. Youth Habington, the son of antiquary Thomas Habington, was born at Hindlip, Worcestershire, 4 or 5 November 1605. He was educated at St. Omer's and at Paris. Being pressed by the Jesuits to join their order, he returned to England to escape their importunity. Wood (Athenæ, ed. Bliss, iii. 224) is usually quoted as the sole authority for this statement; but Wood's information was drawn from James Wadsworth's English Spanish Pilgrime, 1629.Bullen, 415. Career Commendatory verses by Habington are prefixed to Sir William Davenant's Albovine, 1629; Shirley's Wedding, 1629; and the 1647 folio of Beaumont and Fletcher. He was also one of the contributors to Jonsonus Virbius, 1638. There are 6 lines to him in Wit's Recreations. Some time between 1630 and 1633 Habington married Lucy Herbert, youngest daughter of William Herbert, 1st baron Powis; and in 1634 he issued anonymously Castara, 4to, 2 pts., a collection of poems in her praise. A 2nd edition, to which were added 3 prose characters and 26 new poems, was published in 1635, 12mo; and in this edition the author's name occurs in the title of G. Talbot's commendatory verses. In 1640 appeared a 3rd edition, 12mo (frontispiece by Marshall), with an additional 3rd part containing the character of "The Holy Man" and 22 devotional or meditative poems. Habington is the author of a play, carefully written, but inanimate, the Queene of Arragon: A tragicomedie, 1640, fol., which was revived at the Restoration, when Samuel Butler contributed a prologue and epilogue. From Butler's Remains, i. 185, we learn that Habington communicated the play to Philip, earl of Pembroke, who caused it "to be acted at court, and afterwards published against the author's consent." Habington published 2 prose works: (1) The History of Edward the Fourth, King of England, 1640, fol. (reprinted in Kennett's Complete History of England, 1706), which was chiefly compiled from materials collected by his father, Thomas Habington, and is said to have been published at the desire of Charles I; (2) Observations upon Historie, 1641, 8vo.Bullen, 416. Wood says that he took the republican side, and was not unknown to Cromwell. He died 30 Nov. 1654, and was buried in the vault at Hindlip. He left a son, Thomas Habington. Writing The best estimate of his poetical abilities is supplied by himself in the preface to Castara: "If not too indulgent to what is my owne, I think even these verses will have that proportion in the world's opinion that heaven hath allotted me in fortune; not so high as to be wondred at, nor so low as to be contemned." Habington claims credit in his preface for the purity of his muse. "In all those flames," he writes, "in which I burned I never felt a wanton heate, nor was my invention ever sinister from the straite way of chastity." He also dwells upon Castara's chastity with wearisome iteration. Though they are wanting in ardor, the love-verses are elegantly written; and the elegies on his kinsman Talbot are tender and sincere. Several poems are addressed to friends of noble rank, and there is a poem to Endymion Porter. Castara was edited by Charles Elton, Bristol, 1816, and is included in Mr. Arber's English Reprints, 1870. The Queene of Arragon has been reprinted in the various editions of Dodsley's Old Plays. Critical introduction by William Thomas Arnold The center alike of Habington’s life and of his poetry is the lady whom he has sung under the fanciful name of Castara. She was Lucy, daughter of William, Lord Powis, rather above her lover in rank and wealth, as his own verses plainly show, but, as is not less obvious, at no time indifferent to his courtship. What obstacles were interposed by her parents and relatives yielded to their mutual constancy, and Habington was allowed to carry off his bride to his country-house at Hindlip, in Worcestershire, a house which, as he tells her, : ‘doth not want extent :Of roome, (though not magnificent) :To give free welcome to content.’ There they seem to have lived a happy equable life together. Habington devotes as many of his poems to his wife, as to his mistress, and in them reaches a higher level of poetic accomplishment than he elsewhere attains. It is pleasant to contemplate the happy course of this pure and honourable affection, and it is impossible not to feel a kind of liking for so constant a wooer, so good a friend, and so upright a man. We must not complain if, like Evelyn, Habington seems to have gone through the Civil War without taking a decided part one way or the other. The man was no hero, nor born to shine in public life. What political sympathies his writings reveal were strongly Royalist; he himself came of an old Catholic stock, and was educated at St. Omer; and we may be sure that as far as he took any side at all, he took part against those whom he would regard as rebels and schismatics. Habington — as revealed to us by his own verses — was something of a dreamer, something of an ascetic, something even of a bigot. His was just the sort of life and character which could live through, as not of them, the din and turmoil and passion of those stirring years. He was not of those who are great among the sons of men; nevertheless the interest that his work arouses is likely rather to increase than diminish, for though narrow in scope it is intense in feeling, and though in parts feeble and one-sided, it is as a whole made vital by the impress of a distinct and original personality. It is not altogether easy to gather from Habington’s poems in what relation he stood to previous or contemporary singers. The one indubitable fact is his devotion to Sidney, a sentiment he shares in common with all the poets of that time, on whom the Astrophel and Stella sonnets made the most marked impression. Of his few references to other poets the first occurs in a poetical account of his own youthful years, which he gives in The Holy Man:— ‘Grown elder I admired Our poets, as from Heaven inspired; What obelisks decreed I fit For Spenser’s art and Sydney’s wit! But waxing sober, soon I found Fame but an idle sound.’ Another mention of Sidney occurs in a sonnet commemorating Ovid’s Corinna and Petrarch’s Laura — : ‘while our famous Thames :Doth whisper Sidney’s Stella to her streams.’ There are also two passing mentions of Drayton and Spenser, and an interesting allusion to ""Chapman’s reverend ashes" lying "rudely mingled in the vulgar dust." There are no allusions to such poets as Herbert, whose genius was in some respects akin to his own, but this is easily explained by the difference between the two men’s religious opinions. Castara is divided into 3, by some editors into 4, parts. There are at any rate 4 distinct themes — the Mistress, the Wife, the Friend, and the Holy Man. It is by his love verses that Habington is best known, though some of his most powerful and deeply-felt work is to be found in the other sections. A feature which strikes the reader of these verses is their almost exaggerated purity of tone. Habington is never tired of assuring us of the chastity of his affection, and the reader wearies of the monotony of assertions which might very well be taken for granted. In a passage he says scornfully of other poets — ‘You who are earth and cannot rise Above your sense, Boasting the envied wealth which lies Bright in your mistress’ lips or eyes, Betray a pitied eloquence.’ It is only fair however to say that, all deductions made, Habington’s love poems are often sweet and tunable enough, and show real warmth of feeling and delicacy of sentiment. The verses on his friend and kinsman Talbot, a nephew of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who died young, also contain some fine passages; but more characteristic and less agreeable features of the writer’s mind come out in The Holy Man. There are some exceedingly powerful and sombre verses in this collection, but the tone of them is more than Catholic; in parts is revealed an almost Calvinistic relentlessness of bigotry. Habington speaks, as in duty bound, as a good Catholic, and assumes that the Holy Man is necessarily of his own creed. "Catholique faith is the foundation on which he erects religion; knowing it a ruinous madnesse to build in the ayre of a private spirit or on the sands of any new schisme." This is as it should be; one admires him for his sturdy maintenance of unpopular opinions; but it is not easy equally to sympathise with his description of his God, who ‘without passion didst provide to punish treason racks and death in hell,’ and who : ‘when he as your judge appears :In vain you’ll tremble and lament, :And hope to soften him with teares, :To no advantage penitent.’ But gloomy as his theology may be, it is yet the natural outcome of that intense and narrow spirit, and some of the lines in this section have a searching penetrating power such as is not often found in Herbert or other religious poets more widely famous. Habington is terribly in earnest; he has forgotten his love for his mistress and his friend; as he draws on in life the ascetic element which betrayed itself in him from the first, gains in strength, he throws this life scornfully behind him, and his thoughts fasten themselves more and more exclusively upon death and immortality. From a purely literary point of view, Habington only rarely reaches high water mark in poetry. There are no glaring faults in his verse, and few conceits. The mass of his work is fluent, ingenious, tolerable poetry. It does not often attain to the inner music which can only proceed from a born singer, or to the flawless expression of a noble thought. Perfect literary tact Habington does not possess; he will follow up a fine stanza with a lame and halting one, apparently without sense of the incongruity. It takes a strong furor poeticus to uplift him wholly, and keep him at a high level throughout an entire poem, however short. He excels greatly sometimes in single lines or couplets. He now and then surprises us with expressions like ‘the weeping magic of my verse’; or so sonorous a line as : ‘and keep :Strayed honour in the true magnificke way’; or a delicious commencement of a poem which falls off as it proceeds, such as : ‘Where sleepes the north wind when the south inspires :Life in the spring, and gathers into quires :The scattered nightingales’; or a strange and impressive thought like that comparison of virtue, which, lost to the world by his friend Talbot’s death, only lives still in some solitary hermit’s cell — : ‘So ’mid the ice of the far northern sea :A star about the arctic circle may :Than ours yield clearer light, yet that but shall :Serve at the frozen pilot’s funeral.’ It is quite consistent with this that the couplets which terminate a poem are with him sometimes extraordinarily vigorous and happy. In more than one case this final line or couplet constitutes the entire value of the poem. Take this, for instance:— : ‘And thus there will be left no bird to sing :Farewell to the waters, welcome to the spring’; or this — : ‘All her vows religious be :And her love she vows to me’; or this — : ‘But virtuous love is one sweet endless fire;’ or this — : ‘The bad man’s death is horror; but the just :Keeps something of his glory in his dust.’ But his inadequate sense of poetic form does not allow him often to attain to a perfect whole. He is too fond of awkward elisions, and endeavours to force more into a line than it will fairly hold. His sonnets, 1 or 2 of which rank among the best efforts, are formally speaking, not sonnets at all, but strings of 7 rhyming couplets. He does not sufficiently know, he has not sufficiently laboured at, the technical business of his art. Quoi qu’on en puisse dire, la poésie est un art qui s’apprend, qui a ses méthodes, ses formules, ses arcanes, son contre-point et son travail harmonique. L’inspiration doit trouver sous ses mains un clavier parfaitement juste, auquel ne manque aucune corde.’ Habington is one of the many English poets whose imperfect realisation of this aspect of the truth has left their achievement inferior to their talent.from William Thomas Arnold, "Critical Introduction: William Habington (1605–1654)," The English Poets: Selections with critical introductions (edited by Thomas Humphry Ward). New York & London: Macmillan, 1880-1918. Web, Apr. 11, 2016. Recognition 2 of his poems, "To Roses in the Bosom of Castara" and "Nox Nocti Indicat Scientiam", were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900."To Roses in the Bosom of Castara," Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900 (edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch). Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1919). Bartleby.com, Web, May 13, 2012. "Nox Nocti Indicat Scientiam," Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900 (edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch). Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1919). Bartleby.com, Web, May 13, 2012. Publications Poetry *''Castara. London: William Cooke, 1634; London: Bernard Alsop & Thomas Fawcet for William Cooke, 1635; **revised 3rd edition, London: T. Cotes, for William Cooke. 1640; Westminster: Constable, 1895; New York: AMS Press, 1966; **Habington's 'Castara': With a preface and notes'' (edited by Charles Abraham Elton). Bristol, UK: J.M. Gutch, 1812. *''Poems''. London: Johnson, 1810. *''Poems'' (edited by Kenneth Allott). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press / London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1948. Play *''The Queene of Arragon: A tragi-comedie''. London: Tho. Cotes for William Cooke, 1640. Non-fiction *''The Historie of Edward the Fourth, King of England''. London: Tho. Cotes for William Cooke, 1640. *''Observations vpon Historie''. London: Tho. Cotes for William Cooke, 1641. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:William Habington, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Feb. 7, 2016. See also * List of British poets References * . Wikisource, Web, Jan. 22, 2018. * Samuel Johnson, The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: Including the series edited with prefaces, biographical and critical, volume 6. J. Johnson, 1810. Notes External links ;Poems *Habington in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900: "To Roses in the Bosom of Castara," "Nox Nocti Indicat Scientiam" * Selected Poetry of William Habington (1605-1654) (1 poem) at Representative Poetry Online *"To my most honoured Friend and Kinsman, R. St. Esquire" *"Cogitabo pro peccato meo" *Habington in The English Poets: An anthology: "To Roses in the Bosom of Castara," "To Cupid, upon a Dimple in Castara's Cheek," "The Description of Castara," "To Castara, in a Trance," "To Castara, upon the Death of a Lady," "Against Them Who Lay Unchastity to the Sex of Women," "To Castara: Of true delight," "Nox Nocti Indicat Scientiam" * William Habington at PoemHunter (2 poems) *William Habington at Poetry Nook (156 poems) ;About *Habington, William in the [[Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition|1911 Encyclopædia Britannica]] * William Habington at NNDB. * William Habington in the Catholic Encyclopedia *William Habington in The Poets' Chantry * William Habington in English Poetry, 1579-1830 * Habington, William Category:1605 births Category:1654 deaths Category:English Catholic poets Category:English poets Category:English Roman Catholics Category:People from Worcestershire Category:17th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Cavalier poets